This invention relates to a glassware forming machine and particularly to transfer apparatus, in such a machine which serves to transfer hot newly-formed glassware articles from a dead plate onto a moving conveyor leading to a lehr.
In known machines of this kind, the transfer apparatus generally comprises a pusher plate having protruding fingers and displaceable by means of a pneumatic motor comprising only a single pneumatic cylinder and piston. The pusher plate is mounted on the piston and on two guide rods which extend parallel to the axis of the piston through bushings carried by a body in which the cylinder is contained. The cylinder body is mounted upon a base plate which is capable of swinging the pneumatic cylinder through an arc of 90.degree. about a vertical axis to perform the article-transferring operation. Because space is at a premium and it is not possible to take fasteners, for mounting the cylinder body onto the base plate, through the cylinder body, it has always been necessary for the cylinder to be offset relative to the swinging axis, with the result that the known arrangements are always either right-handed or left-handed. In general, no practicable means can be adopted to secure the pneumatic cylinder to the base plate with its centre line extending through the swinging axis of the base plate.
Because the cylinder has to be mounted in an offset position, relative to the swinging axis of the base plate, the pusher plate and fingers, attached to the free end of the piston and guide rods, correspondingly have to be offset in a contra direction in order to establish their relationship to the swinging axis. The resultant torsional load applied to the piston and guide rods brings about a tendency for the outermost end of the pusher plate to droop, instead of maintaining a plane parallel to the dead plate, and in its worst condition the pusher plate may foul the dead plate, creating a jerky and unsatisfactory movement of the transfer mechanism.